A Quiet Presence in Portraiture Florence White lived a life shaped by the steady rhythms of the South Coast. Born in Steyning, East Sussex, she grew up in a household where language and learning held weight; her father was a schoolmaster who taught English to a Tsar. By the time she was a young woman in Hove, she had found her way into the local art school classes of Brighton. She did not seek the loud, sweeping movements of her era, b…